darragh murray

69 Love Songs. The Magnetic Fields. One of the greatest albums I own, and I daresay one of the best albums of the 90s. A friend of mine once commented on this work saying ‘Its hard to get bored of this album, you attach yourself to three or four songs strayed across the different volumes, you listen, and re-listen, until you get weary of listening to them, then you rediscover a different combination of songs, and the process repeats.’ It’s the musical equivalent of moulting.

When I first got my copy of the album, several songs immediately struck chords – “I Think I Need a New Heart” (with its intoxicatingly melodic hooks), “Book of Love” (the lyrics are just perfect) and “Papa Was a Rodeo”. I’ve added other songs from the 69 to my regular listening queue including; “Yeah Oh Yeah”, “Meaningless”, “Washington D.C”. In recent days, I’ve been happily listening to tunes from the album at random, and discovering songs that somehow had skirted under my radar. It is this phenomenon that has spurred me into writing this short article.

It is true, however, that some of the songs seem slightly inaccessible. Songs like “Experimental Music Love” and “Long Forgotten Fairytale” just annoy me. In the case of “Long Forgotten Fairytale”, the incredibly cheesy 80s sounding synth effects just grate after prolonged listening.

However, the album is of such quality that you couldn’t really say with any prolonged justification that songs like the aforementioned ones would always remain in your outbox. Merrit and Co have imbibed 69 Love Songs with a dynamic that allows the album to almost universally accessible to the more educated music lovers (I wryly smile as a write this – I’m such music snob). This is the strength of the album and this is what is incredible about the songwriting. Its true that this collection of songs has contributed to my own meager songwriting skills.

The Magnetic Fields fill their sonic space with simple and catchy melodies, straightforward chord progression and incredible lyrics. It’s a serves as a near perfect example of exceptional songwriting. I suggest that everyone check it out.

Incidently, the new songs I’ve gathered into my list of ‘must listen’ tunes include: “Epitaph For My Heart”, “I Don’t Want To Get Over You” and “(Crazy For You But) Not That Crazy”

This entry was posted on Friday, November 17th, 2006 at 3:30 pm and is filed under DM Reviews Everything, music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.